by Sharp, Zoe
We switched off the lights and I checked we had no company before we slipped out of the skipper’s cabin onto the deck. The fog made it impossible to tell what part of the river we were passing along now. I made a note, when we reached a place of safety, to ask Tom O’Day if he knew where we were. He seemed to know this area better than most. How would his fervour for the After Katrina Foundation survive this episode, I wondered. Would it survive at all?
Although O’Day was the one with expert knowledge of the Miss Francis I recalled enough of the layout to lead from the front. Every time we reached a corner, a doorway or a stairwell, I braced myself, ran through a rapid subliminal list of actions, moves, alternatives.
The bad guys were armed with automatic weapons. I had a flashlight. Not exactly a fair fight, but not a hopeless one either. I was expecting them and if they were expecting anybody, they were most likely not expecting me.
Not many blokes, whatever their training, can shoot a woman without a moment’s hesitation. I’d learned that statistic a long time ago. Now I was banking my life on it being true.
If Hobson was indeed the inside man on this job, he would have briefed our attackers about the personnel coming aboard. Whether they would have worked out I was missing or not was another matter. Clearly, they knew Tom O’Day and Blake Dyer had made it out of the casino in the confusion, but could well have assumed that Sean was Blake’s man and discounted me altogether. I could only hope so.
After all, everyone had assumed Sean was in charge and I was merely . . . what—window dressing?
We headed back towards the crewman’s cabin where I’d first hidden away. It still looked as undisturbed as it had been when we’d left it. I riffled through the clothing on the hanging rail, just to be sure nobody hid where I had hidden. Nobody.
“So, do we have a plan?” Blake Dyer asked, sitting down on the edge of the bunk. He sounded exhausted, as though the adrenaline that had been firing him had leached away, leaving him old and tired and just a little bit wishing he’d never got involved with this damn stupid stunt in the first place.
“We need to get to those people in the casino—get them out of there,” Tom O’Day said promptly. So much for him needing a rest—even a nap—before we could go any further.
“The casino deck is three down and slightly aft of here, isn’t it?” I asked.
O’Day stood, turning a little to get his bearings, then said, “You nailed it, Charlie.” He sounded confident but I made a mental note never to play poker against this man. And definitely never for money.
I flipped a slat of the blinds aside and peered into the darkness outside. “Where are we in relation to the land, any ideas?”
Tom O’Day joined me at the window, pursed his lips as he squinted out much as I had done.
“Damned if I know,” he admitted at last.
“I thought you knew this whole area?”
“Hey, it’s kinda dark out there, ma’am, in case it escaped your notice. And foggy. All I know is we’ve been heading up river.”
Considering upstream was the direction we’d taken when we set off, that wasn’t much help. I refrained from pointing that out and wondered instead where the hell we were going. And—more importantly—why were we going there?
I shook my head, stepped back from the window. There was a reason it was called “intelligence gathering”. Right now, we needed to go out and gather some.
Forty-five
As we left the cabin, Tom O’Day indicated we should turn left, heading aft. I shook my head and jerked it in the opposite direction.
I put my lips close to his ear and whispered, “Roundabout route—safer.”
When I pulled back it was to find him frowning, but here was not the place to argue. That was why I’d picked it. If he realised that he gave no sign.
But both of us knew my choice had nothing to do with safety. I was setting myself up both as hunted and hunter.
Finding suitable prey took maybe a couple of minutes. So far, we’d been purposely avoiding any roving patrols, diving out of sight whenever we heard bootsteps or caught the suggestion of movement ahead.
Now I headed for the source of the noise, with O’Day and Dyer creeping along behind me. Their only job, I’d told them, was to watch my back. So far they seemed to be taking the task seriously.
But I was gambling and I knew it. I needed to find a man alone to stand a chance of taking him down, quick and clean. I’d seen what I was about to attempt done in training but never tried it for real—when the stakes were higher than a mere technical defeat.
If I got this wrong I would end up seriously injured or dead.
And who will mourn for you? Sean?
The way things stood, that wasn’t a certainty.
Parker?
In private, maybe. No, that was unfair – and demeaning to the depth of feeling I knew he had for me. But in public he would show only the same sadness as for any employee. My mother might weep with decorum, clutching a lace handkerchief. My father would not allow himself to weep at all.
I shook myself roughly. Better concentrate on staying alive then, Fox.
And then, halfway down one of the side decks a man stepped into view around the corner of a bulkhead. His gaze was slanted towards the railing and the darkened river, bored and dulled by a route he’d tramped a dozen times already. Repetition with no variation.
Until now.
It took me a fraction of a second to register that he was alone. By that time I had already launched myself towards him. I put everything into an explosive burst of energy and movement, using my arms to drive up instant speed.
The man had been about five metres away. Even as his focus finally snapped onto me I’d closed that distance by half, arms still pumping furiously. Maximum speed, maximum aggression. The watchwords Sean had drummed into us back in the army filled my head like a roar.
I should have been yelling, a battle cry designed to disorientate and paralyse the enemy, but I couldn’t afford to make so much noise. I settled for opening my mouth and eyes wide as I charged and hoped that the man’s mind would fill in the rest.
It did.
For maybe another half a second he was locked motionless, then he grabbed for the H&K machine pistol hanging by its strap from his right shoulder. He fumbled it.
That was all it took and I was on him like a lioness taking down a wildebeest on the African savannah.
I didn’t aim for the man, I aimed through him. I hit him mid-stride, punching my knee upwards dangerously low into his belly, followed up fast with the Maglite straight to the throat.
He was bowled over by the attack, crashing backwards and skidding along the deck with me on top of him, adding knees and elbows as he hit. The breath was blasted out of him along with any warning cry he might have been about to make.
He dropped the MP5K. It went clattering away. I ignored it for now. As long as it wasn’t actively in his hands I didn’t care.
I hit him again, in the face this time, just to get his attention and give him something to think about other than fighting me. I used the end of the Maglite to break his nose with one sideways sweep. By the looks of him he’d never had it broken before. The shock and surprise would be all the greater.
It certainly took the wind out of him. He arched away from me, gasping and moaning, offered no resistance when I rolled off him and dragged him by the collar of his jacket towards the nearest cabin. As I did so I glanced up, found Blake Dyer and Tom O’Day staring down at the pair of us.
“Where’s the gun?” I demanded.
“It went over the side when you tackled him,” Tom O’Day said.
Shit.
“Erm, a little help here?”
Blake Dyer jerked out of it and grabbed for the door handle. Tom O’Day got a grip of the downed man’s arm. He slid much faster with two of us. We bundled him inside. I checked we’d left no trace behind, aroused no pursuit, then shut the door firmly behind us and flicked on the light.
&nb
sp; I quickly checked the man over, hoping he was carrying a back-up piece, a handgun of some description. Sadly, he was not.
I ripped out his radio mic and the curly-cord that led to his earpiece. The transceiver for his comms system was hooked to his belt. I took that away, too, made sure it wasn’t set for voice-activation. I fitted the earpiece into my own ear, adjusting the volume. If they started calling for him, it was best to be forewarned.
I looked up. The men were still clutching their golf clubs ready to take a swing if our prisoner showed signs of resistance.
“I wish I’d managed to grab the gun before it went over.”
“Don’t beat yourself up about it,” Tom O’Day said. “It was a damned fine tackle, ma’am.”
“Yeah, well, I always wanted to play rugby at school but they wouldn’t let me.”
“You played too rough for the boys, huh?”
“Something like that, yeah,” I murmured.
Over the side . . . Double shit. All that risk for nothing.
I slumped back against the bunk. The cabin was another crew quarters, although I hadn’t seen enough crew to warrant the number of cabins the Miss Francis seemed to have prepared for them. Maybe the sternwheeler doubled as a floating brothel. I glanced at the narrow single mattress. Hmm, maybe not.
I stared down at the man moving dazedly on the cabin floor between us. If he couldn’t provide us with a weapon, at least he could give us intel.
Or he’d follow his bloody gun into the river.
Forty-six
“Let’s start with an easy one,” I said. “What’s your name?”
The man with the broken nose glared at me resentfully but I couldn’t blame him for that. When he opened his mouth it was only to breathe, not to speak.
I said conversationally, “Just because I’ve broken your nose once doesn’t mean I can’t break it again. And trust me, it will hurt more the second time.”
I’d taken the roll of duct tape back from Dyer and had used a good measure of it to secure our prisoner to the upright chair in the cabin, hands behind him and ankles attached to the front legs. I knew enough about the technicalities of it to make his bonds uncomfortable as well as secure.
“OK, so maybe the nose doesn’t bother you,” I said. “What about your kneecaps?” I let my eyes slide to my companions, standing awkwardly near the door. There wasn’t much room for four of us in there. “Any room to put some decent power behind that club, Tom?”
He held my gaze, playing his part. “It’s a bit tight, but I’m sure I can get the job done,” he said easily.
Blake Dyer made a kind of muted gagging noise and looked away.
“OK, OK, it’s Lu-Lukas,” the man with the broken nose said quickly. “My name’s Lukas.”
“No it’s not.” I shook my head, regretful. “Your name’s Sullivan—isn’t it?
The fear leapt in his eyes then. He swallowed, coughing as the blood trickled down the back of his throat. Then he let his head hang, gave a brief nod.
Unseen over the top of him, Tom O’Day and Blake Dyer passed me astonished looks. I shook my head. Now was not the time to explain that as soon as he’d spoken I recognised the man. He was the same one who’d searched the cabin where I’d been hiding when the hijackers first came aboard. I wondered if he would have treated me any better, had our positions been reversed. Then I thought of Hobson lying dead in the bathtub.
No, probably not.
I sighed. “Look, Sullivan, you’re going to talk to me eventually. Why drag this out and make it more painful for yourself?”
“You’re not going to torture me,” he said, half bravado, half hope.
I shook my head. “No, I’m not,” I said patiently. I pointed to Tom O’Day and hoped he’d play along. “But you killed this guy’s personal bodyguard—his friend. And, trust me on this, he’s the wrong man to upset.”
“What?” Sullivan managed. “Hey, I didn’t kill nobody—”
“Guilty by association, my friend. That’s how the courts see it, that’s how I see it.” I gestured to Tom O’Day again. “And that’s certainly how he sees it.”
Sullivan squinted at O’Day as if trying to remember where he’d seen the face before. It didn’t take him long to work it out. “But that’s—”
“Tom O’Day, yes,” I agreed. “The millionaire—”
O’Day cleared his throat.
“—Make that multimillionaire,” I corrected. “But what most people don’t know about him is that during his time in Korea he was considered something of an expert at . . . extracting information—usually from people who did not want to reveal it. They never thought he could break them, but he did.”
O’Day’s eyebrows shot up again but he played along and didn’t contradict me. After all, I’d spoken the exact truth . . . in a way. What else did a cryptologist do but interrogate codes and ciphers until they spilled their guilty secrets?
“I guess I’m a little rusty,” O’Day said easily, linking his fingers together and cracking his knuckles out straight, “but they’re the kinda skills you don’t forget in a hurry.” He favoured Sullivan with his best hostile-takeover boardroom stare. “Especially for the man who had a hand in murdering Rick Hobson.”
“For God’s sake, man, I didn’t have nothing to do with that. We just needed to know what he’d done with you. He should never have—”
Sullivan broke off, gulping down his words as he realised he’d said too much. But once he’d started it was hard to stop.
“He should never have done what?” I prompted. “Run? Fought back? Told you he didn’t know anything?”
Sullivan didn’t have an answer to that one, wouldn’t meet my gaze.
“If you were hoping he’d tell you where his boss was hiding, he couldn’t,” I said roughly. “I got O’Day out when it all kicked off in the casino. Hobson didn’t have anything to do with it.” I paused, let that one sink in. “So you killed him for nothing.”
Well, that answers another question. Hobson was not the inside man.
Sullivan’s eyes fluttered closed for a moment, as if he were praying.
“Talk to me,” I said softly. “Before it’s too late. Before anyone else dies.” I didn’t need to be psychic to know Sullivan had automatically included himself in that group.
I’d intended that he should.
“Look, I hired on to do a straightforward job,” he said then, speaking low and fast, like he might not get another chance. “Come aboard, round up the rich folks, take whatever they had. That was all.”
But there was something evasive in the way he spoke that told me he was holding back.
“Hired by who?”
“You think they told me that?” he threw back. “Lady, I’m not far enough up the food chain to know that kinda thing.”
“OK, who else was hired—guys you knew? Guys you’d worked with before?”
He gave a shrug, as if trying to sideslip the question. “Some,” he admitted. “Guys I’d seen around—contractors, y’know?”
“Mercenaries.”
“Like you’re any different.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Who else—local talent?”
“Local guys, sure,” he said. “Fucking gangbangers. Can’t turn your back on ’em.”
“Yeah, ’cause the rest of you are so trustworthy,” I murmured. “What else? And don’t tell me there wasn’t anything, Sullivan. That will only piss me off. Why did you need to know where O’Day was?”
He threw me a quick glance that was almost fearful. “Because we were supposed to grab him, hand him over.”
“Hand him over to who?”
“I don’t know, I swear! All I know is, we were promised a big bonus if it all went off as planned.”
“The robbery?” I queried. “Or the snatch?”
“Both, I guess,” Sullivan said dully. The fear was receding, I saw. Before too long he was going to start feeling ashamed of his cowardice, and then he was going to either start lying to us, or
clam up completely.
I kicked the front edge of the chair between his knees, rocking it back dangerously and giving him another jolt. “Why O’Day? Why here? Why now?”
Sullivan stared at us. “Smokescreen,” he said, like it was obvious and by asking we were just trying some kind of trick. He ducked his head towards O’Day. “So his wife could have him killed before the divorce.”
